The invention relates to improvements in apparatus for transporting rod-shaped articles of the tobacco processing industry, such as sections of filter rods which are to be assembled with plain cigarettes, cigars or other tobacco containing rod-shaped products to jointly form filter cigarettes, cigars or other filter-tipped rod-shaped smokers' products.
The following description will refer, either continuously or primarily, to rod-shaped articles which constitute filter rod sections; however, it is to be understood that the apparatus of the present invention can be utilized with equal or similar advantage for the transport of other types of rod-shaped articles of the tobacco processing industry.
As a rule, or at least in many instances, filter rod sections are transported longitudinally from a source, such as one or more filter making machines, by one or more first conveyors, normally pneumatic conveyors which subject successive sections of a long series of such sections to the action of a compressed gaseous fluid (such as air) in order to propel the sections of the series through shorter or longer distances to a transfer station where the nature of advancement of successive sections is changed from longitudinal to sidewise movement. The conveyor or conveyors which are utilized to advance the filter rod sections sideways (i.e., transversely of their length) can be used to deliver the sections to a magazine forming part of a filter tipping machine, to a reservoir or to any other destination. Similar apparatus are or can be utilized for the transport of filter rod sections from a first reservoir to one or more second reservoirs or from a first reservoir into the magazine or magazines of one or more filter tipping machines.
The equipment at the transfer station should be capable of changing the direction of advancement of filter rod sections from longitudinal to transverse without affecting the appearance and/or other desirable characteristics of the sections. Moreover, the change of the direction of advancement must be carried out at a very high frequency in order to meet the requirements of modern high-speed filter tipping and/or other machines which are used to store and/or process filter rod sections. It is necessary to uniformize the series of sections which advance toward the transfer station as well as to provide between successive sections of the series gaps or spaces wide or long enough to ensure that each preceding section can be transferred from a first path in which it is caused to move longitudinally into a second path wherein it is caused to move sideways without any obstruction by the immediately following section. This is important because, in heretofore known machines, any clogging of and/or other malfunction at the transfer station can entail huge losses in output due to the need to interrupt the operation of the entire apparatus in order to manually remove all damaged sections and to restore the operativeness of the equipment at the transfer station. Moreover, any prolonged stoppage of the transporting apparatus evidently necessitates stoppage(s) of machine(s) receiving filter rod sections from such apparatus.